Waiting on Unemployment

I feel ridiculous.
There is nothing in my life I've reserved for seriousness; everything can be laughed at, I can laugh at everything, and everything can laugh at me.
But, I am weary of waiting for unemployment to kick in.
My eyes are still seeing things under a filmy lense this morning as I check my unemployment check status and read the, once again, "in progress" that spans back three weeks. *sigh* Blinking hard won't make this change.

Nylons

My new best friend is a pair of nylons. However, this relationship is a strained one. I hate my nylons and, for every reason, my nylons hate me. We hate eachother like Walter Matthau and John Lemmon in Grumpy Old Men. You'll see us together, out and about, trying to keep ourselves from tearing eachother apart.
This is what happens when you lose your restaurant job in a recession; you get to know the wadded pair of panty-hose tucked tightly in the back of your sock drawer which have only ceremoniously unfurled for funerals and family Christmas photos. Perhaps Easter Sunday.
If you're a guy, for those special occasions.
I hate nylons. All of my clothes are play-clothes, like in The Sound of Music; made of drapes and intended for tree climbing, canoeing, and frolicking across high Austrian hills.
All of my clothes except for the damned nylons are meant for adventure, though not even the nylons are protected from my sudden need to scale chain linked fences.
Why do I hate nylons? Many reasons. They:
dig into my hips
get caught on things I walk by
cover my feet and restrict the spontaneous need for barefootness
are itchy
Nylons make my legs look awful. I wear them because bare legs in wintertime are considerably more humiliating; white, cold; unavoidably prickly. Nylons are the lesser of these evils.
But don't forget, nylons are evil. If it were socially acceptable I would paint my legs. I would rather not have legs then wear nylons. If it were feasible I would burn all the nylon factories in the whole world and spend the rest of my days as a nylon assassin taking out the nylons still living in obscurity, hiding out from sure obliteration. Remember the days when women had to stop wearing nylons because they needed all the material for parachutes in World War II? I feel like I should of lived in those times, even if I had to be stay-at-home-mom with meager rights.
So. Job hunting. I travel from business to business with a forced smile and a pair of cruddy ill-fitting nylons trying to be the ideal employee, trying find something to pay rent, bills, food, etc.. Oregon has yet to jump in and bail out this sinking ship of financial siuation, even if I've been paying taxes since I was 17. So far, the only thing preserving myself from debtors prison is me and the nylons, bound at the leg, a non-stop variety show of songs and dances.
Unemployment in Oregon asks you to record all your employment endeavors; I've been doing the paper work and my records look pretty unfortunate. Here are some examples:

Employer Name and Address: McMenamins Old St. Francis, Bend, OR
Work Sought: Food Runner
Result: Applied online and brought in resume, received a call in the middle of the night, someone telling me I suck, in the morning application and resume were discovered on front porch covered in what appears to be urine.

Employer Name and Address: Old Town Pizza, Bend, OR.
Work Sought: Cashier
Results: Went to interview, was clearly too old for the job by the look of the eighteen-year-old's loitering, hiring manager looks like he's humoring me when he tells me he's not looking for experience, never called back.

Employer Name and Address: Devore's Grocery Store, Bend, OR.
Work Sought: Cashier
Results: Hiring manger told me when I dropped off application I was ugly and unlovable, no call back, week later found they had hired my arch nemesis.

Employer name and address: Jamba Juice, Bend, Or
Work Sought: Cashier
Result: Showed up two minutes late for orientation so they told me I couldn't be hired, knock over a tray of wheat grass samples, police come asking questions, left with a warning.

All of these precious moments are reminders of sad days my nylons and I were turned away. Truthfully, the only job I would like that requires nylons is the kind where you wear them over your face. However, these kinds of jobs are unreliable, risky and kind of unsanitary.
But as it stands, nylons belong on the legs and are a necessary aspect of my job search. Smile, Resume, Handshake, Nylons.
When I worked at my ex-place of business I would do this evil thing. Someone strolls in with their toothy smile asking a handful of questions: "Are you hiring?" "Can I leave a resume?" "Is this a fun job?" using all the skills their High School "Careers" class taught them. They hang on every word, their eyes shiny with trust and innocence. My own single-man peanut gallery sparks up; "god... you should just apply for unemployment," "save yourself the time and just be homeless," "you really think we're hiring in a recession?"
So, here I am, that desperately energetic person, my hands cupped, hoping someone will drop something shiny.
I know they are tearing me a new one every time they see my made-up face, my gently combed hair, my nylons. They are thinking what a douche I am.
And I deserve it.
Dear God (So what, if I make deals with God?),
If I get a job, I promise to never ever ever make fun of anyone who comes in to apply and even go to the extent of lying to them to fan the flames of their hope. I will tell them, "Sure! We'll be hiring REALLY soon! I heard the managers talking the other day! But it's not official yet! They haven't posted anything!" and I will tell them they have great nylons even though it's a lie and I will tell them "good luck!" and mean it. Amen.
Because needing a job sucks.
And wearing nylons sucks.
When this is all over, when I get a job, become homeless or move to Mexico to escape my looming debt, I don't know what I will become of ye olde nylons. Burn them in a ceremonious rite of passage? Take them out to the shooting range? Bury them? Likely they will return to their old haunt, the corner of my sock drawer until another "desperate time, desperate measures" time will strike again.

Today

My parents moved to Redmond because compared to Beaverton the traffic was lighter and it never rained. To say we moved here because it never rains is like saying I married this person because he/she is never mean. It's just not possible. That person will be one day be mean and the sky is bound to open up. Right now, the sky is opening up. It's been on and off since I got back from Eugene and brought it all with me a week ago. Grey.

My old cat Snowball is trying to stay alive until summer when she can die in a sun spot. I, as well, wait for my sun spot to die in.

It's true what the Buddhists say about "want" being the source of all our miseries. All that festering time in the lovely sunshine has taken its toll by the bleak comparison of today. *sigh* *siiiiigh*

Season of Lent

Lent is a season of fasting and repentance, usually happening in the cold beginnings of Spring, or rather, for Central Oregon, the heart of winter. Dutiful Catholics revere this sacred time of Jesus Christ's death and rebirth by using it to increase their piety by making personal sacrifices. They wean themselves from ungodly vices and make practice of fasting and diligent prayer. Some Catholics give up drinking. Some Catholics give up happiness. It's like a New Years Resolution that only lasts 40 days.
My Lent sacrifices this season include: cussing and eating out at restaurants; two of my very favorite vices. Actually, my favorite vices are beer, the internet, making out, and raucous Irish music. I can never give these things up, however fervent my beliefs.
Truth be told, I haven't gone to church since I was thirteen. My family and I just fazed it out one year.
Church is boring.
Before this time I was very Catholic, going to church frequently. I was once a substitution on a youth Catholic trivia team which rivaled other youth groups in Oregon. I went to youth group retreats, meetings, mass, was baptized as a baby, received the Eucharist when I was ten (the privilege of receiving the bread and wine during mass) but fell short of the sacrament of Confirmation. Confirmation traditionally happens when folks are about fifteen and have the ability to make a conscious choice of accepting the church.
For Mexican Catholics this is known as a "Quincinera" and it's kind of a big deal. Just ask my friend Jessica. You get to wear the most beautiful dress you can find and everyone in the world is invited to your Quincinera party.
It's funny because fifteen is really a time when conscious decisions are made, at least more conscious than when we were kids doing what our parents wanted. Some kids become emo, others discover punk rock or join a Protestant church (THE SHAME!!). When I was fourteen I became atheist and vegetarian. It literally happened overnight. My mom doesn't belive it's possible for me not to believe in god and I'm realizing she's right. It's harder to not believe in god then believe in it. God, however, is a very relative term. Her mother, my grandma, still has Irish Catholic connections in Northern Ireland and the passing of Catholicism, I imagine, is similar to the passing of a sacred family heirloom. My Mom bears a sense of remorse for having three grown unconfirmed children with hardly any relationship to the church.
But if you talk to my brother (Gary, who gave up soda) and I, despite our beliefs; his in technology and mine in what has become a magical desitic humanism, you will find us still discussing Lent and calling ourselves Catholics, albeit, nonpracticing. My friend Patrick will take a fighting Irish stance if he ever heard someone denouncing his Catholic faith regardless if he hasn't been to church since he was maybe four. I heard in France nearly eighty percent of the French are Catholic but only a small percentage actually attend weekly mass. Someone who never goes to synagogue may still be considered Jewish even after generations.
For my brother and I it's kind of like that, more of an identity than a practice.
So, do I believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior? Kind of... I believe in Jesus the way I believe in Socartes or the Buddha. Other people wrote about them and their message has evolved over time to accomadate our needs as a society. I don't need Jesus's forgivness. When I do something bad, I need to be accountable for it and take responsibilty. Be nice to people. Be generous. I need to live a life of honor and service regardless if Jesus is watching me. The church is within you. This is something I can relate with. This, of course, makes me a bad Catholic because to Catholics, the church is everything.
Since, this year, I have curiously decided to recognize Lent, my Mom insists I start attending church because, she said, I'd be a hypocrite not to. So. For the first Sunday of Lent my Mom and I went back to church attending Ye Old St. Francis on Franklin and Lava. Funny how you can leave something for nearly ten years and return to find everything exactly the same: the same prayers, same order of events, same wafers. The crowd was exactly as it was when I last went to church made up of mixed races, hardly anyone my age, young families, choir ladies with their clouds of fluffed hair, teenagers in pajamas, a million old people and the most missed of all, wailing children. A church, designed for acoustic sound does well to project the restless cries of Catholic children.
Listening to the reverberating squall brought me back to my days as a small Catholic child munching on zip-lock baggies of dry cereal, crawling on the ground, and picking at the orange carpet. I remember how church, which lasts about an hour, seemed go on forever and ever. Now, this week, next to my mom, hungover and in my Sunday best, with exception of a run in my nylons, church seems relatively short and painless. Morning announcements are made, we stand and sit and kneel, the readings, prayers, we sing, profess our faith, sing again.
There's nothing really odd about Catholicism in practice the way I hear some people speak of it as "culty." Growing up Catholic I was never duped into believing or asked to believe in things beyond my own reasoning. In youth group I first learned about Buddhism and Hinduism and it was never mentioned they were absurd or irrelevant. I was taught fairly and openly about the church and when my family gradually stopped going we weren't excommunicated or anything. No one except our amazing next-door-neighbor Missus Kennedy (who gave me my first glow-in-the-dark rosary) probably noticed.
What I'm trying to say is, church is church; some people rely on it to feel succesful, to lessen the burden of free will, to find inner peace. They use it as a pedestal to do really awesome things and then some not awesome things.
As we all sit in hard wooden pews listening to the sermon the priest speaks slow and paced allowing our early morning brains to absorb the information. He tells a little joke about a camel and discusses the temptations of Christ and the concept of, in the season of Lent, man not living on bread alone. He emphasizes a point that we ought to make sacrifices to reflect the sacrifice of Jesus fasting for 40 days while he prayed before his death. Compared to not eating or drinking for forty days not cussing, eating at restaurants, and drinking soda are pretty petty sacrifices. While is wasn't a fire and brimstone sermon it was as much as my small tired mind could handle at that point. But still, just as I remember, it was very boring. And I was out of cherrios in the first five minutes.
Priest: "The mass has ended, go in peace." Everyone: "Amen" Dismissal song: 431 "On Eagles Wings."

Winter Time

Today I feel like an old woman trapped inside a young womans body; it's too cold outside to walk or ride bikes, I'm afraid to drive. I'm not tired, just resigned to my resignation. I am an old woman in a young womans body. Some people feel the opposite.
My eye sight has been getting poor. All this winter I've been reading, writing, watching movies, and walking with my head down, my scarf wrapped many times around my neck and mouth. Rarely do I look distances beyond two arm lengths. I've stopped looking out the window, rarely looking into the horizon or into the distance. I've stopped meeting people.
It's too grey outside.
The rare and lonely winter fly has found her way into my kitchen and hovers under the grow lamp, smelling my tomato seedlings. She must feel like she discovered a magical island of summertime. But this would be an untrue thing.
This is why I don't look out the window. There is no magical island of summertime. Just the absense of it.
Last winter I almost joined the protestors on Friday to raise awareness for the underground guerilla anti-winter movement I had started, if only to let the people know there was someone out there who was doing more than whining about it. Now, this winter I am learning to cross stitch and acquiring a taste for bitter rose tea. Anything to keep my eyes and thoughts away from the outside where there is no grass to lay on in the sun, no mint in the alleyway to chew, no flowers to make bouquets.

My old cat Snowball is curled, inanimate, on the back of the couch. She is trying to stay alive until the summer when she can die in a sunspot. I, to, wait for my sunspot to die in.
I am an old lady trapped inside a young womans body.

I hate you OLCC

Dear OLCC,

I hate you.

If you were a cat I would make hissy sounds at you. I would splash water in your direction. If you were a cat you would be like Lucifer in Cinderella: making messes and laying around like a rotten jerk being stroked by an evil step mother.

For several reasons you are not on my Christmas greetings list. First and foremost, you enforce a law that sucks!

I spent time in France: once when I was 17 and again when I was 20 and an incredible privilege opened up to me; I could drink alkeehawl! Yee dog! Every night I drank myself sick, hung out with people of ill repute and drove recklessly home!! Alright!

Not really. But that's what you would expect, huh?

In Paris, friends and I would climb on the rooftop of our hotel to share beers, we drank wine with our dinner, Champagne under the Eifferl Tower on Fête Nationale, in Nice we drank Heinekens and passed a bottle of Rhône on the beaches until we were silly; danced, and walked on the promenade, we smoked and drank Kingfisher in the Indian restaurants and smoked and drank Rosé in seafood restaurants. We toasted everything and swatted one anothers heads when we burped (a German ritual). And then I went home to the dry country that is the U S of A. Like every young adult in American with stunted maturity compared to our European friends I was given coloring crayons and Shirley Temples with my dinner.

Now I am over 21 and I can't go out with my little sister because she is twenty.

Another reason I whisper curses when someone speaks your name is because you trick people! You solicit a bunch of corrupted minors to go around the state ordering alcohol the way an undercover prostitute wears short denim skirts when trying to seduce people into letting her crawl into their car and slap handcuffs on them. And when a busy server or bartender misses one step; doesn't check ID, doesn't check it thoroughly, pours the drink and then checks ID BOOM they lose their license (and any chance of a job in the restaurant industry) are freakin' FIRED, fined and then you beat their dog and make them watch. Really? REALLY? People under 21 can't even be set a foot in a bar without there being a violation. God forbid!

Why can't you just relax?!?! Just let the kids buy some beer, and give the servers, bartenders, grocery store cashiers, bouncers, etc. etc. a break! You really give people a complex! I feel like I should surgically implant my ID onto my forehead until I am eighty years old so I don't have to hand it to every person in the room when I step into a bar. Here I am at Ray's the other day and some smiling, god-fearing employee offers me a wine sample. "Oh, lovely! Yes, please!" "Can I see your ID?" "...never mind."

And a word to the minors working sting operations for OLCC; TRADERS!!!! I hope you garbage eaters have lonely evenings with pee in your beer when you turn 21 and realize you have no friends!

Okay, we shouldn't serve drunk people. That's probably a good idea. I spent hours in your required OLCC class at the Shiloh Inn years ago just to learn that you shouldn't serve drunk people. Thank you, i would have never known.

Because of your iron hand, neo-prohibistionist existance I hang around 7-11 parking lot and sell marked up cases of Busch Lights, PBR's, and Santana Champagne to children. TAKE THAT OLCC!! You can never stop me! HISSS! HISSSSSSS!

Faint at Heart

There is this funny little disorder I have. My Mom gave it to me. We are the kind known as the "faint at heart;" the people doctors usher out of the room when bad news is about to be announced. The people story-tellers shoo when a gruesome story is about to be told.

We cry at things. I cry at Hallmark commercials, the cheesiest of animal rescue stories, Chicken Soup for the Soul, country songs, and Obama speeches. I just cry. I don't even need a glass of wine in me. The cheesiest of cheese has me in raptures. At the Goodwill I was looking at this book made to soak in additional revenue from Tim McGraw's song "Live Like You Were Dying" and I was reading the lyrics and started getting all teared up.

"and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying."

It's this song about a guy who gets diagnosed with... something, it doesn't say, probably cancer, and with this renewed perspective on mortality he does all this awesome stuff like sky dive, ride on bulls, fish with his Dad and watch eagles fly around. Oh, man. I cry EVERY time.

This weekend, driving with Erica, my sister, she puts on "Waitin' on a Woman" and we're listening to it, feeling the music and by the time Brad Paisley is talking about a first date in the second verse I am yelling at her, "turn it off! I can't listen to this! I'll cry and crash the car!" Quickly the song is switched to the Lonely Island's "I'm on A Boat" which not even the most emotional emo could cry at. I told Erica to never ever play country music when I am driving as I become blind with tears of deep emotion, and veer of the road into an abyss (because abyss' are always on the side of roads).

Crying at everything makes me very very uncool. I realize this. How can you be cool if you are chillin' with your bros, about to watch Valkyrie or Wanted and a preview for The Secret Life of Bees comes on? "I gotta... get some more popcorn," you announce crumpling a tissue to your face like a runny nosed four-year-old.

One time I was running on a treadmill at the gym, totally zoned out with my headphones connected to the television watching America's Next Top Model and suddenly I hear "In the arms on the angels..." Oh. No. Sarah McLachlan, my nemesis. It's that Humane Society commercial with all those slow motion clips of animals in cages, kittens and puppies and old cats and old dogs and suddenly my lungs seize up and I can't gasping for air, stepping off the whirring treadmill as if having as asthma attack.

Another time at the end of AI (which I always call A1) tears were rolling down my face as the credits began to roll. My then boyfriend comments, "that movie sucked," then turns around and says, "are you crying?!" I buried my head, "Leave me alone!"

Yeah!? So!? Maybe the Spielberg ending was really really really weird but it was so sweet!

The movie Armageddon and Homeward Bound had me in raptures as a child and I sobbed in the bathroom from several minutes at the theater after watching Blood Diamond. My brother and I cried together at this historial documentary about dogs that went to Vietnam to help the soldiers. At the end of the story the dogs had to be left in Vietnam because the government thought they would be diseased or something. They had all these old vets choking up over losing their dogs. It was horrible. I am told everyone has, but I cried at Elf.

I am my mother. One day my kids will laugh at me when I am crying over some ridiculous Lifetime movie about a girl who has the whole world against her and manages to get back on her feet and find a loving man to boot. And hopefully one day they will cry with me when they break down and discover their inner uncool.